And no adolescent movie male is complete without a sassy younger sis ( Alexa Nisenson) to not just drive him crazy but, in this case, also help expose their mom’s boyfriend as the super creep he is. He also discovers an ally in his homeroom teacher ( Adam Pally of TV’s “ Happy Endings” and “The Mindy Project”), who is hip enough to reference rapper Drake and hip-hop’s Future in order to get the class to understand the principles of fair trade. Imagine this candidate for student council as a less cutthroat version of Tracy Flick.
Naturally, “ Middle School” also finds room for puppy love as Rafe falls for Jeanne (Isabela Moner), the brainy, ambitious, eco-aware and cutely bespectacled girl of his dreams. 1 ranking in district testing, schemes to prevent Rafe’s fellow remedial students from taking the exam and potentially bringing down the average score. Matters come to a head when Dwight, bent on maintaining his school’s No. Just as Rafe has an enabling partner in crime, Leo ( Thomas Barbusca), to help pull off his prankish acts of undercover rebellion, so, too, Dwight has a sidekick of a vice principal (stand-up comic Retta) to assist in fighting back. The plot basically revolves around Rafe’s plan to avenge the confiscation of his precious sketchbook, taken away and destroyed by the self-promoting, law-and-order-obsessed lout of a persnickety Principal Dwight (Andy Daly). Dolittle 2”-has managed to make a watchable family film is a miracle in itself. Still, the fact that somehow Steve Carr-whose previous directorial output includes such landmarks of cinematic lameness as “ Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” “ Daddy Day Care” and “ Dr. But more dubious is a late-arriving left-field reveal that briefly drags the narrative into highly manipulative maudlin territory that it hasn’t quite earned. Giggles, though I swear I heard one cast member call the pooch by his real name, Calvin at some point) is not exactly blessed with abundant canine charisma. “ Middle School” manages to pretty much waste the presence of Lorelai Gilmore herself, Lauren Graham, as Rafe’s well-meaning single mom by having her fall for one of Hollywood’s go-to personifications of smarmy male oafishness, Rob Riggle, as her boorish fiancé. In other words, one’s a con artist, the other a creative artist.Īctually, there is one thing that “ Middle School” has in common with the 30-year-old “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”: The assault and battery of a cherished red car. Whereas everyone’s favorite ‘80s truant relied on his smarts to invent excuses to skip school and camouflage his scams, Rafe is more of an introverted type who finds escape by using his imagination to draw a fantasy world of cartoon monsters, space creatures and humanized animals that now and then come to animated life onscreen. Although it might be hard not to avoid such comparisons, don’t expect hero Rafe Khatchadorian (ultra-relatable Griffin Gluck from TV’s “Private Practice” and “Red Band Society”) to come off like a latter-day Ferris Bueller.
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